THE GOOD
• It has a well-formed, corporate-sturdy shape.
• It comes with excellent keyboard.
THE BAD
• HDMI or WiDi are absent.
• It is a little large and weighty considering that it’s a 14 inch notebook.
OUTCOME
One of the top reliable picks whether factually or metaphorically is the HP EliteBook 8460p even though it isn’t the best compact business notebook.
We begin with the cover fastener. Whereas other corporate notebooks provide a minute, fragile fastener or, even more severe ones, it makes you scratch with your fingernails at an unreal one, the HP EliteBook 8460p – sold for $1,239 direct – comes with a large, shiny key that opens the securely fastened cover. It is the foremost of your regular experiences to the HP EliteBook 8460p’s rugged and elegant design.
We are not mentioning “rugged design” ordinarily or for the sake of it, as in other EliteBooks, the HP EliteBook 8460p is a corporate-sturdy laptop, designed to endure military tests for shock, quivering, small dry particles, and high temperature. It is not as safe from attack and damage as the fully rugged laptops such as the Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 – sold for $4,843 Street and rated 3.5 stars – or the Dell Latitude E6420 XFR – rated 3.5 stars – but it is designed to reject the scuffs and bumps of travel, as well as careless liquid spills, on account of the spill-resistant keyboard that comes with an open drain at the base.
Its rugged design makes the HP EliteBook 8460p a little larger and weightier compare to other 14 inch notebooks like the Lenovo IdeaPad U400 – sold for $899.99 direct and rated 4 stars – and Dell XPS 14z – sold for $1,299 direct and rated 4 stars too – and it is devoid of a number of latest features like Intel Wireless Display (WiDi). However, it remains a good-looking, beneficial friend.
PATTERN
When you contrast the HP EliteBook 8460p to the basic dark of Lenovo ThinkPads for instance, the EliteBook 8460p is a fashionable platinum shiny slab measuring 1.3 by 13.3 by 9.1 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.4 pounds, with an aluminium cover, palm rack, and enclosed strip that houses the ports on a dark magnesium alloy base. A DisplaySafe rubber frame shields the display, which has a small LED close to the web camera to light the non-backlit keyboard – some aspect of the keyboard actually – in a dark location.
The matte-finish 14 inch screen provides 1,366 by 768 resolutions. Though not the brightest or highest in contrast that is available, it gave good detail and colour. The sound from the HP EliteBook 8460p’s double speakers, both positioned left of center, one on the obverse border and another at the base, was deafening enough to pervade a big room, though it sounded flat
.
The somewhat curved in, island-style buttons of the HP EliteBook 8460p’s keyboard give a suitably strong typing feel. Apart from HP EliteBook 8460p’ strange keyboard brand (small up and down arrows stuck between standard left and right arrows) the design is fine, with dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn buttons and three keys at topmost right that command Wi-Fi, audio mute, and browser launch. The last, when the laptop is turned off, launches HP QuickWeb, which contents hasty browsers and e-mail checkers by introducing a Web surfer and widgets like weather and news headlines without necessarily booting Windows.
The crystal-covered touchpad is unrivalled, with smooth cursor gesture, tapping, and movement control and not too rigid, not too loud mouse keys under – and on top, with the second couple of keys belonging to the pointing device located at the junction of the G, H, and B buttons. The curved in pointing device is not really that fruitful like the touchpad – or Lenovo’s TrackPoints – though it should appeal to users who just want an option pointing sticks.
ATTRIBUTES
A conservative 56Kbs modem and a VGA and Ethernet ports are what adorns the HP EliteBook 8460p’s rear border. And on the right flank of the body frame are the microphone and headphone jacks, double USB 2.0 ports (one is an eSATA/USB combo port, and the other is able to charge smartphones and tablets) and a DisplayPort and Smart Card opening. On the left flank are double USB 3.0 ports, a FireWire port, SD/MMC ExpressCard openings, and the DVD plus RW drive.
There is a docking connector at the base that concludes the hardware connectivity list, which is short of just HDMI. Likewise, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth check two of three boxes on the wireless shopping register, with wireless Display, as stated, missing. With neither HDMI nor WiDi on hand, corporate travellers preparing a large exhibition with the HP EliteBook 8460p had better depend on a VGA projector instead of an HDTV set.
Information technology managers will probably prefer the HP EliteBook 8460p’s Core i5 vPro CPU and TPM security chip, but small and medium as well as large enterprises can gain from the greatest part of the 320GB (7,200 rpm) hard drive’s software preloaded: like the HP ProtectTools, a collection of utilities that direct you through security operations comprising of managing passwords, encrypting data and sanitizing (securely erasing) files. Other software obtainable with Windows 7 Professional comprises HP Power Assistant for managing power profiles, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, and a 2 months Norton Internet Security trial. HP supports the EliteBook 8460p with a three-year limited components and maintenance guarantee.
FUNCTIONALITY
The HP EliteBook 8460p comes with a 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M CPU and 4GB of RAM. The blend will not establish any speed records, but makes the HP EliteBook 8460p an energetic performer for the productivity task for which it is built.
Its PCMark 7 record of 2,065 is 200 to 300 points shy of competing with systems like the Lenovo U400 and the Gateway ID47H07u, but its Handbrake video encoding and Photoshop CS5 image-editing records of 1 minute and 46 seconds, and 3 minutes and 56 seconds correspondingly, are very good with the Core i5-based, 14 inch notebooks, though they follow the Core i7-equipped Del XPS 14z record of 1 minute and 37 seconds, and 3 minutes and 27 seconds, correspondingly.
Although we won’t be putting it forward that a busy corporate traveller should be spending his time on games, but we must mention that the Radeon HD 6470M graphics powered the HP to playable frame rates at 1,024 by 768 resolution and in Crysis it was 38.3 frame per second and in Lost Planet 2 it was 31.3 frame per second. The greatest frustration in benchmark experiment was that the HP EliteBook 8460p rejected our MobileMark 207 battery drain experiment, making us to rely on our DVD imitation experiment of looping a two-hour MP4 video from the laptop’s hard drive. The HP EliteBook 8460p detachable 62Wh battery worked for up to 5 hours and 60 seconds with display brightness set at fifty percent.
In contrasting with the duo of the Acer TravelMate 8481T-6440A and Dell Inspiron 14z Core i5, the HP EliteBook 8460p is a bit bulky and not enough in battery duration. But even with the additional weight of its partly-sturdy built and the absence of those notebooks’ HDMI and WiDi, the HP EliteBook 8460p is a sophisticated corporate notebook. It is appealing and alluring, with a beautiful typing and touchpad experience, and designed with security consciousness.
By Greg O. Afamah
Moinsights 